Isaac Hempstead Wright, who plays Bran Stark on “Game of Thrones,” responds during a Q&A at the AT&T flagship store in San Francisco on Friday, April 19. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

The first sight of Isaac Hempstead Wright on Friday evening, April 19, was jarring. The actor, who plays the paralyzed Bran Stark on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” was flailing around animatedly, while standing squarely on his feet, in reaction to a swarm of White Walkers coming at him through virtual reality goggles.

“It’s really intense. It’s actually quite frightening,” he said, speaking with The Chronicle while lines of fans snaked around the AT&T flagship store in San Francisco, waiting to enter a public Q&A and meet and greet.

Fans craned their necks to catch glimpses of the British actor, whose stone-faced character’s plummet from a tower eight years ago put him in a wheelchair and set in motion one of the most ambitiously sprawling television shows in history. As one crowd member later shouted, “He’s walking!”

Hempstead Wright’s appearance came at peak levels of hype, not only for the show, but also for his character. After the premiere of the series’ eighth and final season this month, the most discussed element for the gigantic and rabid fan base was his mysterious and cryptic appearances as the Three-Eyed Raven throughout the episode. Of course, the memes immediately began rolling in.

“I’m loving it. I mean, I’ve always wanted to be a meme,” the 20-year-old actor said.

As the doors of the store opened, fans, some in cosplay as Daenerys Targaryen or the Night King, rushed in to take photos on a full-scale iron throne replica, while others waited in line to try out “Game of Thrones”-inspired virtual reality sessions and to feast from a huge table piled high with medieval-style culinary offerings. Exclusive-ticket holders lined up for a meet and greet with Hempstead Wright, whose warm demeanor felt startling in contrast to his usually expressionless face on the show.

The actor later performed the trademark blank stare for the crowd, to its rapturous delight, during the packed Q&A before revealing the look’s convenient source. “I’m just blind when I’m doing it,” he said, to laughter. “Cause I don’t have my glasses on my eyes, and I don’t wear contact lenses. So I genuinely can’t see when I’m on set.”

He couldn’t say much about upcoming plot points, either, remaining predictably tight-lipped about fan theories. “Impossible,” he said early in the evening about disclosing clues of what’s to come, while remaining dodgy throughout the Q&A.

Hempstead Wright walks through fans at the AT&T flagship store in San Francisco. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

Of course, the significance of his role has evolved unusually, after a late character transition from Bran Stark to the prophecy-wielding Three-Eyed Raven, a testament to the painstakingly developed scope of a show that has now spanned half of Hempstead Wright’s life.

“I can’t even really remember life before ‘Game of Thrones,’ ” he said before the event. “I was 10 when I started, so pretty much every key life event I’ve had, apart from being born, has pretty much been in some way linked to ‘Game of Thrones.’ So it’s been everything to me. It’s been my life.”

The conclusion of the show, he said, has yet to hit him, though he feels it has come at the right time. In the fall, Hempstead Wright plans to return to college to study neuroscience.

“It’s this weird thing where it’s like I feel like I’ve lived an entire life and career, and yet my life is just starting,” he said.

For fans, a visceral reminder of the expansive, now world-weary span of the show’s eight-year arc came toward the end of the recent season premiere, as its final seconds showed Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) seeing Bran Stark for the first time since he pushed the Stark child out of a tower window in the pilot episode in 2011. “It’s really hard to know what Bran is thinking,” Hempstead Wright said in response to a crowd member’s question about the episode’s cliff-hanging look between the two. “I think in a sense he’s just trying to sort of remind Jamie who he is, reminding him that he does know, and he could use that information if he so desires.”

The answer came immediately before a question from which Hempstead Wright elicited the crowd’s biggest response of the night: If you could play any other character, who would it be? “Controversially, it would be Jaime Lannister,” he said to a chorus of fervorous reaction, including shouted responses from the crowd. Fans, it appeared, had something to say.

Hempstead Wright, who plays Bran Stark on “Game of Thrones,” plans to enter college and study neuroscience when the series ends. Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle